Weeks of Lenten pondering has led to an Easter-tide realization…that nothing I can do will ever rise to the lofty standard of being good. Certainly, my thinking roots back to that biblical text of God calling His creation good… against those pointed words memorialized in Luke, where Jesus disassociates himself from goodness with a theoretical ten-foot pole cross, by saying

“Why do you call me good. Nobody is good except for God.”

I once confused the standard of ‘good” with being ‘good enough.” Where now I know that good is better than I know. Better than I am. And that only on my better days, can I offer up ‘good enough.’

Upon that landscape, I’ll still confess that if someone (or something) calls out for assistance, I do what I can to help — even when I know I’ll fall short of doing the good others deserve. Some weeks I pour time out and spread myself thin, while others, like the last two, not so much. I’ve no need to recount details, but my “good enough” deeds usually connect me to one of my four children. Sometimes to Sis or Aunt Jane. But rarely beyond these. Which may be why I wish to record this one that took place during the dark days of Lent, that had me fulfilling a strange promise to a stranger living out west that I’d earlier tracked down via Facebook’s email system.

Yes, I’m back on Facebook — for the moment, anyway — because of some good-deeding committed to last autumn. A pastor friend of mine is writing a book and he wished to more easily facilitate comments within a digital writing support group on Facebook… and since I was the only holdout, and wished to help…

Facebook has its place and its uses. One, I’ve learned, is this: For the bargain price of one dollar, I can contact anyone in Facebook’s planetary system, including a lady whose one-of-a-kind name appeared at the top of an ultrasound photo taken of her unborn child….hmm.. seven years ago, I think. Or was it eleven? Funny how I can no longer recall and that the number of years no longer matters.

The image had fallen out of a used paperback I was reading, Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, which I had purchased online from a vendor near Seattle. It’s a fine tale, one thatweaves together three stories of three women living in separate times and states, more or less connected together by another novel…. this one, Virginia Woolf’s, Mrs. Dalloway. I read The Hours during Advent….and I suppose the stranger who first owned it read the book during her pregnancy. Perhaps she marked her progress in the paperback with an ultrasound photo, before losing track of both.

Rather than tossing the picture out, I set it aside, only to let it gather dust till I ran across it again a few days after Ash Wednesday, buried in my unread stacks of books. I decided to spare a few minutes to the internet, which led me to Facebook and its lost mother… which led me to draft a strange email that began…. “I hope you’ll not find this too weird, but….”

Now sitting more than two months removed from this event, I wish to say that if that Lenten good-enough deed of mine was weird, how I wish to see more like it in the world, and more of it from me. So much so, that it would not seem weird at all. Because… who am I kidding? Isn’t life, at its best, wonderfully weird? And isn’t it when we try to keep life in the bounds of the middle of the bell curve, so that we don’t stand out, that life falls strangely flat? You’ll not be surprised, I imagine, to hear that the mother, still unknown to me, still a stranger to me on Facebook (since we are not friends), was overjoyed at my boldness in my reaching out to her past from my present.

Perhaps the weirdest part of all these lines… is that I had not intended to share this strange story between strangers when I began this post. Instead, I’d planned to share a different one about a landscape design for a prayer garden I’d created for another pastor friend of mine who serves an inner-city Methodist church. But here we are, with a header photo strangely out of place with the print surrounding it.

That the execution of that landscape design calls for many “good” deeds and ornamental plant material — but no green beans or other edibles — leads me the other original goal of the post: To share a trio of recipes involving green beans that connect me back to three women I love who live or lived in different times and places. It seems right to at least make good on this one. Because in one way or another, as noted within the recipes below, these green beans have each been synonymous with good deeds. And there is nothing flat tasting about these.

#1 ~~ Greek Green Beans

Thanks to Aunt Jane, who first preserved my grandfather’s recipe in word…

Amy’s Asian Green Beans

Thanks to Amy for sharing her mother’s best friend’s recipe… and for serving them up with a Christmas dinner prepared a few days after my mother-in-law’s passing; I hope to never forget such kindness, nor that lovely dinner.Add the following ingredients to an oven-safe casserole dish and bake 20-30 minutes at 350 degrees.2 strips of crumbed crisp bacon1/2 cup of chopped onion, sauteed in 2 Tbsp olive oil.1 12 oz bag frozen green beans1/3 cup brown sugar1/3 cup, scant 1 Tbsp, Soy Sauce (original recipe called for Teriyaki Sauce)1 – 2 Tbsp water

Everyday Green Beans

Thanks to Kate, who told Kara, who told me about the wonders of using broth instead of water… to Mom for the bacon… and Aunt Jo for the chopped onions, that she used to season most vegetables cooked upon her stove top. This is a true hither and yon family combination….2 strips of crumbled crisp bacon1/2 cup of chopped onion, sauteed in bacon fat or olive oil2 cans of drained green beans2 cups of beef brothBring to a boil and simmer for a few minutes before serving.

My face is no longer on Facebook. Last September, I wiped my wall clean — much like my windows will be by the end of today, thanks to a lovely window-washer named Katherine.

I “met” Katherine by phone this past spring break, when she was on vacation, taking it easy in the Caribbean. She ended up spending a day and a half washing windows at our Mesta Park two-story the following week — and as it happens with many contractors that work for me — my relationship with Katherine became a mix of business and pleasure.

It’s not that I know Katherine all that well. What I know I can count on less than ten fingers. First, she’s a single mother of two older boys. Two, she’s a hard worker. Three, she likes historic homes well enough to own one. Four, she’s conscientious — when she’s running late, she calls. Five, she takes pride in her work, and in leaving my home better than she found it. Six, she’s attractive. Seven, she injured herself badly somehow and sometimes, when working, she’s in pain.

It’s puny knowledge, truly. But even this is more than I knew about the current lives of many Facebook friends. Yet, it was something all together different that triggered my departure, because I quit soon after wishing my grandson a happy birthday via Facebook — which happened when I couldn’t reach him on his cell phone — which happened since we no longer enjoyed an everyday relationship — due to reasons beyond his control. And mine — or so it felt at the time.

The act of writing that solitary birthday greeting on his wall left me sad. And it made me wonder: Is this what my relationships — with those I hold most important in the world — is being reduced to? Sending birthday greetings through a social media service — to follow up an old-fashioned greeting card delivered by others. Though it works for some, I’d rather breathe a prayer in the silence that separates me from those whose lives I cherish.

It was one of those decisions made in an instant — the kind which often lead to regret — where I clicked a button before I could change my mind. And without mention to any of my friends — except for my husband — my demise on Facebook, I think, was not really noticed. One minute I was there — and in the next, I wasn’t. As far as I know, no obituary or announcement was delivered to my friends.

I’m looking forward to clean windows today — the kind so clean, one can see the reflection of their own living face within them — that one can look beyond their own face to a world full of trees and flowers and sun and moon and real people, with legs and arms and backs and hands to wave out a greeting.

But sometimes — I’m not gonna lie — I regret that rash decision of mine. Why it happened yesterday, in fact, when I set out to address Christmas cards, when I realized I no longer have my good friend Litha’s new address, which she shared with her friends via Facebook. But not enough yet, I think, to do an about-face. I’ll just have to call our mutual friend Wynona. After I catch up with Katherine.

I confess to joining Facebook–at my sister-in-law Nancy’s urging late last winter–with no real plans to use it. My thinking was: I’m already challenged enough when it comes to keeping up with friends by phone and email; Why would I ever want to complicate my life with one more tool?

But then, I began to receive a few isolated reminders from Facebook asking me to confirm a friendship or two. And so I did, mostly to be polite. But now, based on the last few weeks, my days of isolation could soon be over, as more and more of my past is catching up with me. While most are friends from Texas, a few date back to my high school years. And I confess to being pretty wowed at the power of this tool that can re-connect me with people I’ve almost forgotten.

Most of my Facebook friends are extroverts. It looks like about half are serious about it. And a few have confessed to being addicted in some form or fashion. By looking at the grafitti left behind on my wall, they may be right.

I like to write though I’ve not yet written on any walls. Not even my own. No surprises here. I’ve always been a bit of a wallflower. If you were to spot me at a party, that’s where you’d find me: holding up some wall. And it’s no different in Facebook. I respond as people buzz over or buzz by, if they call me by name. But being the introvert I am, it will take me a while to work up to writing on walls.

Facebook walls are one big digital party. My wall reveals idle chitchat as well as a few mixed digital drinks and games. I received my first digital drink about a month ago. And because of the chitchat…I feel more like a next door neighbor to some friends who wrote on my wall to tell me that they were on their way out the door to mow their yards. Before Facebook, I would have never known people cared when I mowed the yard.

But to be honest, rather than chitchat about yardwork or whatever, I’d much rather curl up on a couch with a good freind or two and just listen to their lives. But these days, few have the time or even the desire for meaningful conversation. I guess they’d rather ‘work’ a room, even if it’s an internet room with iconic faces. And I ask, does working a party sound like fun? Not to this introvert. In fact, working a party sounds like an oxymoron.

My extrovert brother Jon joined Facebook earlier this week. Already he has over two hundred friends. Driving down to see Daddy on Wednesday, we laughed about the fact that I had only gathered twenty friends with six months work. And it is work. I was never good at networking. My lack of networking skills was just one of the reasons I found it easy to leave the ranks of accounting management for the greener pastures of retirement.

So what does retirement look like, according to my Facebook profile? Reading and writing and no arithmetic. And while it’s a ‘no’ to arithmetic for now, my wallflower of a CPA certificate is still hanging out on my basement wall. Just in case. And just in case anyone out there in the middle of the electronic room is interested, I mowed my neighbor’s yard this morning. 🙂

“Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? — every, every minute?”